Houston Mayor John Whitmire acknowledged Saturday that the city is cooperating with federal immigration authorities after denying for months that Houston police would get involved with immigration enforcement.
Whitmire was a guest speaker at a conference Saturday hosted by former Kemah Mayor Bill King, a fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. During their conversation, King mentioned that Whitmire had recently been the subject of a New York Times profile about how the mayor is keeping Houston safe while President Donald Trump sends militarized immigration agents into other Democratic cities like Chicago and Los Angeles.
Whitmire, speaking to a largely friendly audience of about 250 people, lauded Houston’s diversity and the contributions that immigrants bring to the city, but said that other cities were in “turmoil.” He said that some level of cooperation with the Trump administration was necessary to keep Houston from suffering the same fate.
“I’m not going to say that we’re not cooperating with ICE, because that’s frankly not true,” Whitmire said.
Whitmire then shared an anecdote about how an unnamed official recently urged him to try to get Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers out of Houston’s public spaces. The mayor said that he couldn’t do that, because the Trump administration would send 500 more officers in response.
The Chronicle has previously reported that Houston police officers have called ICE on over 100 people since the start of Trump’s term, the result of a department policy to contact the agency if officers encounter someone with an open immigration warrant.
Whitmire, however, has been vague about the city’s involvement in immigration enforcement when asked, saying that Houston does not “deal with immigration” but admitting that officers have an obligation to call agencies that issue warrants.mb32″ data-block-type=”text” data-dropcap=”false”>
The vast majority of HPD’s calls to ICE have stemmed from traffic stops, and most of the administrative warrants issued by ICE are for outstanding deportation orders, rather than violent felonies. A spokesperson for Whitmire did not return a request for comment.
ICE appears to be boosting its activity in the Houston area as President Donald Trump attempts to follow through on his campaign promises for mass deportations. Last week, the agency announced that its agents arrested over 1,500 people in Houston over a 10-day period, its largest operation in the city under the Trump administration so far.
Immigration advocates say that the police department’s willingness to cooperate with immigration agents risks harming public safety by discouraging immigrants from reporting crimes. Earlier this year, Houston police officers called ICE on a woman reporting domestic abuse.
“It worsens public safety when victims of a crime are not going to report or cooperate with investigators for fear that they may end up being deported,” Zenobia Lai, executive director of the Houston Immigration Legal Services Collaborative, said at the time. “That doesn’t make any of us any safer.”
See here for some background. I had a hard time writing this part of the post because everything up to this point made me so angry. I will defend the devil long enough to say that I would absolutely not want to be the Democratic mayor of a Democratic city, especially in a Republican state, at this point in time. I would not want to have to deal with the constant threats to our safety, our independence, our dignity, our humanity, our people. I can understand the instinct to duck and cover and hope that the monsters go off in chase of more visible targets. It’s a natural response to abusive behavior.
But it doesn’t work, and in the course of not working it corrupts your soul, because you find yourself in the position – consciously or not – of rooting for the abuser to pick on someone else and leave you alone. Being quiet and compliant doesn’t stop your things from getting broken, it just makes you think maybe it can. Your only hope is to fight back, ideally in concert with others in the same position so as to find strength in numbers. It may well not work, and indeed it may well cause you to be treated more harshly, at least in the short term, than you might have been otherwise.
But at least you’ll know you tried. At least you’ll know that as the strongest person in your city, you stood up for those who truly have no power and did what you could to protect them. Because if you don’t, who will?
I doubt John Whitmire thinks this way. I have no idea how he thinks about anything at this point, but I have some idea about how he doesn’t think about things. What I do know is that he’s the wrong person for the moment we face. It’s not about how “progressive” or “centrist” anyone is, it’s about whether they’ll stand up to the bullies. He has failed at that task. I don’t know what else to say.
“But at least you’ll know you tried. At least you’ll know that as the strongest person in your city, you stood up for those who truly have no power and did what you could to protect them. Because if you don’t, who will?”
Well said.